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Since the 1920s, the Fellowship of Reconciliation has provided an interfaith context for people to put their religious beliefs into action. Our understanding of "interfaith" has meant not watering down our faith traditions into a "least common denominator" sense of religion. Instead, FOR has worked to strengthen each faith tradition to be honored in its richest and most vibrant articulation of the pursuit of nonviolent social change.
 I am proud to be a part of a community that has provided a depth of multi-faith engagement for close to a century. In it, I have shared beautiful space with people of Eastern and Western, Abrahamic and Indigenous, Atheist and Earth-based traditions. And in it, I can fully claim my own Christian tradition -- with its unique Roman Catholic, Christian Science, Episcopalian, and UCC potpourri.
In Western Christianity, this coming week is observed as "Holy Week" -- beginning with Passion Sunday (or Palm Sunday) and concluding with Easter Day.
For some, the meaning of this period has been sanitized -- put into a historical box, and disconnected from our modern-day struggles.
How can we "Reclaim Holy Week"?
This year, faith activists in communities around our nation are organizing the Holy Week of Resistance.
This is a national call to action of locally organized, autonomous, Holy Week related actions and events that contribute to the liberation struggles of all oppressed persons, beginning with Black and Brown Peoples.
You can help Reclaim Holy Week.
 Why? The love and justice ethic of an unarmed Palestinian Jew named Jesus -- who was wrongfully convicted and publicly executed by the empire -- spurs us to resist state violence that targets Black and Brown lives today. (See, for instance, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou's recent article on these connections.)
The Reclaim Holy Week campaign has been organized by a grassroots collective of activists who believe in the love and justice ethic of Jesus and who also belong to the de-centralized leader-full Movement that gained new life through the Justice for Mike Brown Rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri.
Inspired in part by #ReclaimMLK protests and #BlackLivesMatter activism, "Reclaim Holy Week" means that we who believe in the love and justice ethic of Jesus are taking back the power of the narrative from those who deploy the name of "Jesus" to support, either idly or actively, the oppression of God's Peoples.
Here in Western North Carolina, evangelical Christian leader Rev. Franklin Graham deeply offended many this month by issuing a statement that "most police shootings can be avoided" if people would simply follow a biblical mandate to "submit to your leaders and those in authority."
We will #ReclaimHolyWeek here in the face of our neighbor Rev. Graham's comments. Our gathering will be posted to the listing of National Actions and Events.
What might your community do?
Join us in this invitation to strive to embody both love and justice, whether one adheres to an institutional religion or not, to #TurnUp4Justice during Holy Week -- in celebration of one of the many interpretations of the Resurrection, in radical solidarity with Black and Brown liberation, and in resistance to all forms of societal oppression today.
People of all faith and non-faith traditions are desired. #ReclaimHolyWeek is NOT about "proselytizing," "evangelizing," or "converting" anyone into any specific religious framework.
In peace and for collective liberation,
 Ethan Vesely-Flad
Director of National Organizing
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Image credits: Moral Monday Clergy March #FergusonOctober by Heather Wilson; Holy Week of Resistance logo. |
